I’ve watched politics in both our countries for a good long time now. What’s going on these days in the US of A is just so frightening I have trouble believing that I haven’t somehow strayed into a novel while I’m reading the news.
All these years of silliness, non-co-operation, inflamed rhetoric and lack of logic and common sense that has assailed both our countries and I still had the faith that somehow, it would all work out – that the highest impulses would win out over greed and chicanery.
After all, we’re democracies, right? The ideals of civic education, rational dialogue, and working together for the good of society are supposed to be part of the basics of what we’ve defined as the type of society we want to live in. So what on earth has happened with this health-care business?
Sure, I’m prejudiced as to the outcome. Living in a country where “free” basic health care is a right for everyone, I’ve been astonished that there is a democratic country that doesn’t see that as a necessity. I’ve been appalled at the stories friends have told of losing their homes to necessary health care costs, of being dropped from their health insurance for inexplicable reasons just when they actually needed it, of health insurance companies claiming bankruptcy and leaving everyone with no care. And what is the estimate? Forty million people there without any kind of care insurance at all?
And this thing you have where someone else can tell you what doctor you have to use? Good grief! That would be the day, for anyone in Canada!
But finally someone comes along in your government and seriously tries to initiate some kind of change and you’ve got the whole world wondering if someone has spiked the water supply with rabies! And fearing it might spread to other areas of your public discourse.
Certainly nothing in the past half-century of politics has come anywhere near the hysteria, irrationality and falsifying of facts that is so evident right now. Edited video, photoshopped pictures and outright lying about the facts and figures is so overwhelmingly prevalent – and neither side is entirely innocent – that the rest of the world is aghast, and frankly quite frightened, that the world’s major super-power has erupted into a banshee-shrieking, saliva-spitting, unthinking, fractured mob scene.
And nobody’s listening either. There is no chance, it seems, for a reasoned discussion of the facts, or even a civilised exchange on the interpretation of the facts. Open your mouth on the subject and immediately your audience closes it’s mind and likely starts hurling insults and inane slogans.
What on earth is going on with you people?
There are three major candidates for some kind of reason (or excuse) for all of this, and I expect it is a combination, with different factors having different weights depending on the weigher.
So tell me what you see and honestly think. Is it racism, fear, or greed?
Certainly some people seem to be having a hard time dealing with your first black President, and for those folks, no matter what the poor man does, they will attempt to vilify him and veto his plans.
Is it fear of the unknown? Combined, of course with a lack of what could truly be called facts in any meaningful discussion?
Or is greed the main motivator here, and pushing both of the other excuses and any other thing they can get hold of to make people behave like lunatics? Certainly the medical insurance lobby has to be almost as powerful as the petro lobby, and they certainly have the money to throw around. They stand to perhaps lose a big chunk of that income, along with the heady power of life and death over their subscribers if there are significant changes. You already have “death panels”, and those insurance companies run them, nevermind the silliness that was put forth by some of the preposterous anti-change groups.
So, can anyone tell me – just what is it that you’re so afraid of anyway?
And when do you expect that you will start behaving in a manner that won’t have the rest of the world – but especially those close to your borders – wondering what nightmare-inducing lunacy might next break out within your borders and spill over to affect the rest of the world?
